Thursday, 3 October 2013

Rust and Bone (2012)

Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone is a melodrama. It’s themes, metaphors and symbols aren’t
subtle – Stéphanie (Marion Cotillard) performs with Orca whales in Antibes and
has to have a below knee amputation after an accident. She scarcely knew who
she was before the accident but despairs for herself after it. Ali (Matthias
Schoenaerts) has just arrived in the city with his five year old son to stay
with his sister. Alain is a survivor - an insensitive bruiser who used to box,
and, as the film progresses, becomes involved in bare knuckle fighting. The
film is about how these two characters find themselves, self-respect, love, and
a measure of peace. It’s also the first great film of the recession. Audiard
sets his film in the workplaces and the small living spaces of the poor working
class of southern France. Everyone is trying to make ends meet; criminality or
destitution lie just beyond the next bad decision.

Ali and Stéphanie meet briefly at the start
of the film when, as throughout, he treats her with a mixture of kindness,
(insensitive) honesty and straightforwardness – though don’t underestimate how
unlikable he is for much of the film. After the accident, Stéphanie is lost,
but manages to reach out for help by to turning to Ali. What evolves, somehow,
is friendship and passion. So, why, and how, is it so good?

Audiard’s vision and technique should not be
underestimated. Much of the film breathes a kind of expressionism. Key scenes
are infused with perfect measures of sunlight or shade to give depth and
emotional resonance to scenes and images. He mixes this with a healthy dose of
naturalism, using a hand held camera to get us inside the small living spaces
and follow the characters around the urban environments. Like most of the great
directors, he knows how and when to use close ups and long takes (lingering on
faces and images longer than any you would find in much mainstream genre cinema)
to infuse the narrative with humanity and significance. Also, watch the “Making
of” documentary to see how Audiard’s flair and vision is completely bound up
with his collaborative way of making films. His team of people tackling
difficult technical problems and aesthetic nuances are remarkable.

Audiard is one of the greats of modern
European film-making along with Michael Haneke and Claire Denis (and yes
possibly, probably, Ken Loach too). Of all of them Audiard is the populist and
the one with greatest range – just look at those films: the quiet comedy of A Self-Made Hero (1996), the romance of
Read My Lips (2001), the forlorn,
angry The Beat That My Heart Skipped
(2005), A Prophet (2009) and then Rust and Bone (2012). Whilst full of
praise, (legendary) film critic David Thompson wonders if Audiard tries to be a
little too entertainingand too often suffers
from a mild case of sentimentality especially when trying to tie up endings.
He’s probably right, but for most of their running time the films bruise you
with their hard, uncomfortable truths, indelicate passion and lost souls.
What’s more he elicits stunning, often extraordinary performances from his
actors every time; or is it perhaps that, like Woody Allen, he has the uncanny
knack of choosing his actors perfectly.

I almost think that Rust and Bone shouldn’t work and I know that for some, the last ten
minutes will cast a sentimental shadow over what has gone before. BUT,
Cotillard and Schoenaerts are brilliant and the film makes me want to believe
in their characters and fills me with a kind of longing; that people learn from
each other; that redemption is possible no matter how dully we inhabit our
lives from time to time; that it’s possible to find a balance in the world so
that straightforwardness wins out; that our drives toward superciliousness and
being judgemental fade away, and that emotional honesty, between adults, can be
refreshingly simple.